Bally's Cool 1978 Evel Knievel Professional Home Model Pinball Machine

ladies and gentlemen this is Joe's classic video games back with another really cool pinball video for you this evening this is a pretty interesting machine this is Bally's professional home model Evel Knievel pinball machine this came out in I believe 1977 and was a kind of 2/3 size of the commercial arcade commercial pinball machine model that you could buy for your house they used a lot of the parts that were actually on the full-size machines so it wasn't really a toy it was kind of more marketed kind of like you know a home pool table would be marketed or the old if you remember the old bumper pool tables from the seventies and sixties it was more like that something for your game room so it's actually a pretty fun little machine but a gentleman brought this in and wanted us to work through it a little bit it's actually working but it plays real slow and the flippers are weak and all that so we're gonna shop it out a little bit and we figured we'd fill up a little video while we were working on it just so it would kind of document how these things are made and then at the end of this video we'll play it a little bit and you can see what you think but yeah we'll get into the first thing we're gonna do is lift up the playfield and look underneath it and see how similar it is to the full-size models and what's going on with it alright folks I want to show you what the inside looks like there's three screws that you take off the front and once you take those out you can take the lockdown bar off and then the playfield has a little bar at the front of it that screws down to these two screws I mean these two holes so you take these two screws out and then you can lift it up like we've done here so these have are similar to the to the actual commercial versions you know you can see that the playfield is not quite as nice I think I think you've got more more plies on the commercial one the flippers are very very similar to the commercial models may actually be about the same it looks like the Paul is a little bit different at least on this one so that it can run two flippers on the right on it on most Bali Games where they have two flippers on the right they'll have an extra an actual mmm I'm pretty sure they have an extra actual hole solenoid and everything for the flipper but on this side that looks very similar to a commercial Bali flipper coil setup so the parts should interchange so you know to make it a stronger it looks like you could probably put new plunger links on it although that's that one's seems like it doesn't have basically you want to see if there's a lot of slop in this and there doesn't seem to be just a little bit but the coil sleeve being replaced would help getting the end of strokes which adjusted right would help make it more powerful the pop pumper assemblies look the same as the commercial versions you can see that they've got their switch gapped let's see if I can zoom in on it for you it's now the gap is pretty wide on that switch so it's gonna be hard for the pop barber to work we'll get that adjusted and cleaned and then of course most obvious is they have these big boards on the bottom of the playfield with lamps mounted them instead of having the individual sockets like the commercial machines do they also have these little micro switches that the spinner so you can see there's the spinner the spinner wire comes through the playfield here and as it spins around it hits this this armature here and if it does it right kind of hard to see it look there you go it should hit that switch in and you should hear it click click click click those switches you could probably replace you might have to swap this one this armature to the new switch but sometimes you can take them apart and clean them too I don't know if those are looks like those are riveted together so you might not be able to do that on those but we can check those out a little bit and then you've got all of these sockets but you know twist and have the bulb in that's very similar to more modern pinball machines have a lot of those on it so there's not much to it oh we've got the one kicker over there let's see what the kicker is simply looks like the slingshot yeah looks just like the ones in the commercial units so it's pretty cool they made they designed it with commercial parts well we'll get those all of that a little snappier get the pop bumpers working a little better get the kicker working a little better and getting the flippers working a little better let's see what's at the back here alright here is the back of the cabinet you've got a big power transformer there that's a different model than what they have on their commercial units but they do have a big transformer on the commercial units and then you've got a power supply board here which is also a different model than what they have on their commercial units that actually looks like the boards underneath playfield I noticed had Midway logos on them that actually looks a lot like a Midway power supply for some of their arcade games like Sea Wolf and Space Invaders that would have came out around this time so it's very similar it's not not identical but it's very similar and then you get the connectors over here and then this shield I would imagine went over that there's a circuit breaker just laying there maybe that used to be there and they've swapped it at some point who knows but I think what we'll do everything's working I think I think what we'll do is we'll work on some of this stuff underneath it see if we can get it to play a little stronger the guy wanted us to get it faster so we're gonna try to put a little more slope on it see if we can get it a little bit faster and if I can I'll get in the back so we can see if there's anything we can do for that back glass or if it's just gonna keep the terior ad alright folks so we cleaned it up got the glass back on it basically on the flippers that we were showing you exciting bikes chiming in basically on the flippers that we were showing you we replace the coil sleeves like you were doing her on a regular flipper rebuild and then they seem kind of weak so I started looking through the power supply board that was in the back and there was a like a trace on the board between one of the diodes and the voltage that came out to the flippers it was still getting 22 volts but one of the diodes wasn't connected so I don't know if it was like doing half wave rectification so it didn't work right or what but they were kind of limp once I got that soldered back the the trace soldered back together BAM they're pretty strong now for what it is they're not strong for a full-size machine but for the home model they're pretty strong so we did that we wax the play foot a little bit also the lights weren't working so basically that was just a bad connection on one of the pins so got that back doing its thing the these take 147 bulbs everywhere on the play field which is a seven volt bulb and then Alison take four 55s which are a flasher bulb in the pop bumpers we put four 55s in machines a lot for like the name on a game so these older EMS they didn't have any kind of logic to make a bulb blink or anything so if you put a blinking bulb it blinks by itself just up it has a voltage go into it so it's kind of nice to put them on an e/m just cuz it kind of draws your out of the name but on this one you've got the same thing going on the the game board in the back isn't really powerful enough to blink a bunch of bulbs or anything so they shipped them with 455 bulbs and the pop buffers that just blink on and off randomly so it ended up looking pretty good and like I said we got the flippers a little bit stronger so it plays a little bit better it's really not much to it so I'll set up the tripod we'll play it a little bit and you can just see how the gameplay was oh and the I think all of the layouts were almost identical there was there was some of them had a a kicker over here and then another one over here you might have saw on that one board underneath the playfield that there was room for one so maybe all night captain fantastic it's got both of them or something like that but I'll set up the tripod and we'll play it a little bit we didn't we didn't redo the back glass we just left it how it was because I don't want to screw it up any worse than it is this is an arm machine we're just repairing it for a guy trying to get the flippers a little stronger which we accomplished so we'll well set up the tripod and we'll play it a little bit alright folks so this thing doesn't have any kind of a track mode because it's just such a simple little game board in it but so all it does is those tube lights that are blinker bulbs blink but it does have music now all the music is the same I believe on all of the home model games so it plays some like some standard little little tunes like I'm in the money and stuff like so we'll play it a little bit so that's you know Beethoven's fifth doo doo doo doo [Music] no get a little better than that oh and see how them I don't know if you can tell on the camera it may look like the same player shoots again light is on it's not the and see the 6000 that light is not on it's just bleed over from the other lights basically when one bulb lights up you can see it through the hole next to it so it's kind of a little bit confusing [Music] but we haven't done anything to the flippers except rebuilding so if you've got one of these you should be able to get the flippers this strong just from adjusting and cleaning the playfield and stuff like that we've got it set up too as far as the angle is the the front leg levelers are all the way in and the back ones are out about an inch we usually put more of a slant on it but on a real pinball but the this one the flippers just aren't strong enough to handle it being real steep we just left it how they designed it oh we lost about that Lane I should be telling you the score work we're at 20,000 and it's five ball I don't think you can set it on three ball [Music] Zippity doo-dah believed that one was doesn't that just scream evil knievel zippity-doo-dah go get some bonus here [Applause] all right so we're on ball five or at 41,000 when we started that when we had it when we were looking at it earlier the display wasn't on that's because when you when you start the game when you plug when you first plug the game in there's no score so the displays won't even be little you just get a score whenever you've actually played it another thing is whenever the game's over you still hit the flippers cuz there's no coil or anything to turn off the flippers whenever the game's over the ball is down in the out hole so you can't play it or anything with the game over but since it's a home version you just hit start these things were seven hundred and ninety-nine dollars new I saw someone saying that they remembered them at like Montgomery Ward and they were never on sale for like 550 or so apparently $7.99 was the manufacturer's suggested retail price but back then I think they stuck to that a little more than they do now you know now if the suggested retail price was 800 they'd be selling it for 600 you know but back then I'm not you know I think it probably was 800 at most places Ron Paul for I only got 11,000 points I want to get it to I want to get all the get the bonus all the way up just you can see it some of it [Music] every once in a while you'll get a real good ball go and then you make a lot of points it's actually pretty fun just for charge it's actually pretty fun for a home version you gotta imagine you know now people buy them into full versions and put them in their house but you probably didn't have as many people doing that back then so this would be the next best thing and I'll say this they make modern ones for your house [Music] that the sounds are a little better on and they're not as expensive they don't cost $800 but uh they're not this fun they're pretty cheap this one's pretty cool it has that vintage seventies things [Music] so that I'm in money they play that every time you win an extra ball so I think I yeah one I want an extra ball while using the extra ball I guess just because the points got high enough we had a modern ones I think are like three or four two or three hundred dollars but they're not as cool as this and this has that 70s thing going on vintage 70s electronic stuff we're doing a little better on this law I need my L over there and I got my free ball already and I'm at my triple bonus what you think about that triple bonus oh okay let's see what we get we're at 65 [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] one another free ball all right I don't know how it's gonna keep track of all these free balls but we'll see I'm at 110,000 and you see the same player shoots again is already lit so I won't mind I'm gonna need it to and I'm still got the same player shoots again lit yeah I think I won two or three extra balls oh this this also had a tilt on it so you can't shake it too much and shake it but don't break it it was the thing I was talking about it's just bleeding through one of this it's not the actual though that light wasn't it okay so we're at 115,000 we'll play one more game [Music] we'll be serious this time 7950 can you believe that isn't that pathetic there we go it's the hardest one it seems like for me that one just right where it goes down the middle I might if it tries that crap again I might have to nudge it and you know me I'm not much of a nudge you need to get that three that one's kind of hard to get to oh I should I should have hit it with the nudge [Music] damn I keep missing it if you get time if you get time on YouTube go go watch that I'm in the money it comes from a movie called gold diggers 1933 go find Google that on now we're gonna play one more time I only got twenty six thousand that time look look for gold diggers 1933 I'm in the money on YouTube you're gonna love it that's where that song comes from I'm all over that three I know it works cuz I got it earlier that was a direct hit it should have worked that time [Music] [Music] all right I was 11,000 on ball one you kind of get more points as it goes along because you the features and everything don't preset after each ball so once you build up to where everything's worth more it stays that way thank ya I had done something special there all right twenty-eight thousand five hundred and fifty points and we're all ball number four [Music] all right I'm have to check that number three switch [Music] yeah thirty-six thousand two hundred fifty this is the last ball folks right down the dam middle sad I did me alright well there you go evil says thanks for watching give us a thumbs up down below cuz we took the time to film this for you we didn't have to do that we could add all this fun without you right so give us a thumbs up for taking the time to film the video for you and leave your comments below if you had one of these back in the day or if you think they're just crap or if you think they're pretty cool now I bet if I was giving this thing away you wouldn't turn it down right so I like they're pretty cool so leave your leave your comments below and we will see you on the next video